Archive for the ‘Secret Church’ Category

As followers of Christ, it’s difficult to know just how we ought to respond to the recent horrors displayed by ISIS. The Bible calls us to take an active stand against unjust abuse, oppression, and persecution; we’re called to defend the defenseless. And there is a place for government and even military action. However, the Bible is also clear that personally, our reaction should always be marked by love, mercy, and a desire for justice on behalf of those suffering. Everything we do (and everything we refrain from doing) should be because we love our just God with all that we are, and our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 10:27), not because we hate evil people and want to personally “teach them a lesson.”

Suffering is one of the most difficult and often perplexing realities that Christians must face. It comes in different forms and with levels of intensity. Suffering can either strengthen our faith, leave us disillusioned, or, tragically, it leads some to walk away from Christ altogether.

Thankfully, God has not left us helpless in our suffering.

Not only do we have God’s personal presence through the Holy Spirit, but we also have the truths and promises of his Word to help us. In Secret Church 12: The Cross and Suffering, David Platt walks us through what amounts to a biblical theology of suffering (75 key texts from Genesis to Revelation). Platt lands on five foundational conclusions, each of which could merit a separate book. In your own suffering, remember these five truths:

1. A high view of God – his sovereignty, his wisdom, his goodness, and his glory – is essential for understanding suffering in your life and in this world.

2. A humble view of man – his sinful depravity and small perspective – is essential for understanding suffering in your life and in this world.

3. The ultimate reason suffering exists is to exalt the glory of God’s grace through the suffering of God’s Son for the salvation of undeserving sinners.

4. God ordains suffering for the Christian in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes.

5. The completion of the Great Commission will include great suffering, but eternity will prove it was worth the price.

Rather than address your specific situation, something Scripture doesn’t necessarily do, these points give us a lens through which to see every trial through the eyes of faith. We may not always enjoy or even understand God’s purposes, but we can trust his wisdom, his faithfulness, and his goodness. That is our ultimate hope, regardless of what we suffer.

If you didn’t catch our previous announcement, Vietnam is our Secret Church 15 prayer focus. Why are we highlighting this area? Two reasons, both of which you’ll hear more about in the coming months on the Secret Church blog. Make sure you go there for regular posts and updates.

Unreached People Groups – Vietnam has 74 unique people groups comprised of 93,530,125 individuals. Of those, 71 are unreached. Of those unreached groups, 23 are unengaged. Only three people groups in the country are reached with the gospel.

Persecution – According to Open Doors’ World Watch List, Vietnam is the 16th worst country for Christians to live in, in terms of persecution. Much of the opposition comes from communist authorities. However, in a country that is overrun with various mixtures of Buddhism and animism, Christianity isn’t exactly welcomed by the friends and family members of believers.

As we’ve learned, persecution accompanies witness because the goal of persecution is to silence witness. This means we cannot simply pray for suffering Christians to endure and persecution to end; we must also pray for the gospel to increase and the number of UPGs to decrease.

On behalf the persecuted Christians and their persecutors, and on behalf of the unreached peoples and those trying to reach them, won’t you join us in praying for Vietnam?

If you knew that the Old Testament had one overarching purpose, would it change the way you handled it?

In Secret Church 1: Survey of the Old Testament, David Platt says that it was written to reveal how God redeems His people for His kingdom. Knowing that the Old Testament has one unifying storyline affects at least three areas of our lives.

Knowledge
It will affect the way we understand. It is going to keep us from fragmenting it. This is what we do: we take the Old Testament, and we fragment it into all kinds of different pieces. Then we can’t put it together, get frustrated, and we move on to the New Testament. That hampers our ability to understand what God desires to teach us. We need to know the story.

Application
The beautiful thing is that as we look at God’s work in history, we realize that the God who was working in their life is also the God that is working in our lives. We also realize that, if there is a story that is begun in the Old Testament, then that story is still continuing today. We are a part of that story. We want to apply it to our lives. We want to know it. We want to be able to apply what God is doing in all of history. If God is doing something in all of history, don’t you want to know so you can apply it to your life?

Proclamation
There are all kinds of worldviews, ideologies, and world religions in our culture today that are teaching things that are false and against the story of God. If we know the story and we proclaim it, then we can show its beauty and its grace and its truth amidst all the diverse and competing worldviews that are present today.

Favoritism first disrespects man. That word “favoritism” literally means “to receive according to the face.” In other words, to respond to someone based upon external factors, external appearance – to respond to them based on that.

Now, we have been talking about favoritism when it comes to the rich and the poor, and that’s exactly what this context right here [James 2] is addressing. But I want to encourage you at this point to think through if there are any facets of your life where you are showing favoritism – discrimination based on external appearance, based on external factors – for this is sin. And there are many ways that this may look. As I was praying for this, I was reminded again of the ways of the world that are so pervasive in our lives. I was reminded of this particularly when it comes to ethnicity.

I’m not going to use the term “race” here… I think we have to be careful when we talk about different races because we begin to divide up the theological reality that we are all a part of the race from Adam. And this affects how we view ourselves… our unity in Christ, our need for Christ. But when it comes to different ethnicities, you think about it.

Imagine yourself walking into a lunchroom and there are two tables. You’re by yourself, and there are two tables. At one table, there is a small group of people with an ethnicity like you, and at the other table, there’s a small group of people with an ethnicity not like you. What immediately goes through your mind? The reality is, we are drawn, naturally, to the table that is like us. What is the thought process that leads to that? Isn’t it something like – at the speed of thoughts, it’s not like we intentionally go through these stages – but isn’t it something like, “Okay, like me, not like me; like me, therefore safe; safe, therefore comfortable; comfortable, therefore beneficial to me,” and the converse, “Not like me therefore not safe, not comfortable, not as beneficial to me.”

And the challenge before us is to ask God in Christ to radically transform our thinking so that we do not live according to the pollution of the world, that even in the way we speak we are careful not to discriminate, not to show or point out how people are different from us based on external appearance, external factors. When someone says to me, “I was talking with a Korean guy the other day…” Why did you tell me he was Korean? “I was talking with a Hispanic guy the other day…” Why did you include that? Do you say, “I was talking with a white guy the other day? I was talking with a black guy the other day?” The reality is, we are constantly thinking in terms of what separates us from others, and the body of Christ changes everything. We are all in Adam’s race, in need of Christ. And with brothers and sisters, we are all unified in Christ in a way that transforms and transcends ethnicity.

And so we must be careful here to avoid favoritism that disrespects man – that always highlights our differences – because it not only disrespects man, but, ultimately, favoritism dishonors God Himself. We’re not just breaking a law, we’re offending a lawgiver. To show favoritism is to dishonor God.

The key to understanding how to interpret the Old Testament is to understand why God gave us the Old Testament. This is big…

Why do you think God gave us the Old Testament? Was it for historical information? We know that is not true because He doesn’t give us all the historical facts. He doesn’t fill in all the blanks. He definitely picks and chooses parts of history to give us. The purpose is not just so we would have a good history of the people of Israel that leads up to Jesus. That is not the point.

What about for moral lessons? Did He give us the Old Testament for character studies, to teach us about how to be courageous, wise, brave, or strong? Or, did He give us the Old Testament for examples in life? Is that the purpose of the Old Testament?

The last three encapsulate what are probably the primary reasons we give that affect the way we interpret the Old Testament. This is what I mean by that:

When we go to the Old Testament, most often we look at the stories, and we use them as moral lessons, character studies, or examples for our lives. It starts when we are children growing up in Sunday school, or Bible study, or whatever it may be. We learn the story of David and Goliath, and we learn to have strength in our battles. We look at Abraham and we learn to have faith. We look at these different characters and we say, “We need to be like them. We should learn from them.” As I mentioned earlier, I am not saying that it is not good to see some of these characteristics in these people, but I am saying we need to be careful not to make a quick jump from our lives to their lives. God was doing something much broader than just giving us some character studies. These people were playing a unique role in history.

What is interesting when we study the Old Testament and begin to look at characters is that we always identify with the hero in the story. Who studies David and Goliath and says, “Now we are the people who are scared to death in the background?” No one says that. You don’t want to be that group of people. We are going to study Cain and Abel – who are you going to choose? We always see ourselves in the role of the hero. Whatever applies to them also applies to us.

We look at Moses, in Exodus 1, and see this baby that is born and is saved from the destruction that is going on around him. We automatically think that God will take care of us, and we equate ourselves with Moses instead of equating ourselves with the countless other Hebrew babies that did not make it through the destruction. What right do we have to identify with Moses and not to identify with the others?

Here we begin to see how we can begin to misinterpret the Old Testament if we don’t have an overall picture of why things unfold the way they do.

If you’re new to Secret Church, that may leave you with more questions than answers. So to learn what exactly the prayer focus is, watch the two minute video below. You can also explore the prayer focus websites from last year or the year before that.

As the video explained, it’s more than a few minutes on the night of Secret Church. After Secret Church, we’ll be devoting the entire month of May to focused prayer for Vietnam, so now is the time to begin thinking and praying about how you can encourage your church or small group to pray for the Peoples of Vietnam.

The Secret Church 15 topic, “Christ, Culture, and a Call to Action,” will touch on everything from abortion to homosexuality to religious liberty. Make sure you don’t miss out on this important conversation about what the Bible says and how we are to respond in this world.

Go here for information about the simulcast, and go here for information about tickets to the live gathering in Birmingham (which will be available this Monday morning, 1/12).

Good news for those who want to be a part of the live gathering for Secret Church 15: tickets will be available right here on Monday, January 12, 2015 at 9:00am CT!

Tickets go very quickly, so make sure you’re online and ready to sign up when the time rolls around. This year’s live gathering will be held at The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama, on Friday, April 24, 2015. David Platt will be teaching on Christ, Culture, and a Call to Action.

For more information on Secret Church 15, or for frequently asked questions about Secret Church in general, go here.

… the Peoples of Vietnam! That’s who we’ll be learning about in the coming months, who we’ll pray for together the night of Secret Church, and who we’ll pray for throughout the month of May and beyond. There is much more to be said about the people groups in Vietnam and why they’re worthy of our collective focus, but for now, pray about how you might involve your small group and/or church in supporting the work there.

Be sure to keep your eye on the blog (as well as Facebook and Twitter) in the coming weeks and months as we learn and pray together… because you don’t have to wait until April 24th to start praying.